Stonehell Mapping Project - West Marches in a Megadungeon
The giant prison complex of Stonehell teems with life and treasure. Plunder its riches, solve its mysteries, record your findings.
$20.00
/ Session
Details
2 players following this game
Custom / Sunday - 12:00 AM UTC
Session Duration / 3.5 hours
0 / 20 Seats Filled
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About the adventure
Wanted: professional dungeon delvers, cartographers and loot carriers! The ancient prison complex of Stonehell is enormous, dangerous, and poorly understood. It has been attracting ever new inhabitants for hundreds of years. People report heightened desires drawing them into the twisting corridors. Greed has attracted countless adventurers and saw them drowned in the depths of the dungeon. Something must be in the deepest levels of Stonehell, influencing the minds of living creatures in an ever-expanding area surrounding the canyon its entrance is located in. The Archaeology and Cartography Society has established a base of operations in the nearby frontier town of Stepinstone. Their mission: explore Stonehell, discover what is really down there, bring the truth back out. Mapping is central to play. Your characters will carry paper and ink, carefully chart corridors, record hazards and fill in the gaps left by previous expeditions. Every map you bring home becomes part of the expeditions' shared knowledge and gives future adventurers a better chance of surviving the dungeon. You will play adventurers suited to the dangerous task of exploring dungeons: steady fighters, clever magic-users, holy clerics, quick thieves, all of them treasure hunters and fortune seekers, willing to risk their lives for a payday. Characters don't need to be heroes. They need to be willing to delve into the unknown, carry their share of equipment and make it out alive. This game uses Old-School Essentials, a fast, straightforward system inspired by early editions of Dungeons & Dragons. It emphasizes exploration, clever problem solving, meaningful choices and dangerous but understandable rules. No previous experience with the system is required. This is a West Marches style campaign. This means you can drop in and out from session to session and request games at times convenient to you. Each time, 2 to 6 players delve into Stonehell. There is no predetermined party, no assumption that everyone plays each session. Characters return to the town of Stepinstone between expeditions while Stonehell beckons ever new treasure hunters and seekers of knowledge. The dungeon persists. Adventurers come and go. The maps remain. Bring back treasure if you can. Bring back your companions if possible. Above all, bring back a better map of Stonehell so the next person may conquer its depths.
Game style
Dungeon Crawl
West Marches
Rule of Cool (RoC)
Game themes
Meet the Game Master
Less than a year on StartPlaying
2 games hosted
Highly rated for: Inclusive, Beginner Friendly, Storytelling
About me
I have lived in 4 different countries throughout my life and like bringing this mixture of cultures and languages into my games. I enjoy blending different kinds of stories in my games. I get excited when players bring their own backgrounds and cultural experiences to the table, especially if I am unfamiliar with them. I got started running games at the age of 9 and tried a multitude of systems over the years. I love learning by challenging myself with a new kind of game or a new set of rules so I can bring forward clever lessons and mechanics into future play.
View Profile →Character creation
Creating your character
We will be using the Old-School Character Generator to facilitate character creation, found here: https://dndcharacter.com/ You will have to copy the resulting character sheet into roll20 for ease of access. I trust that you will be honest when creating a character. Simply roll your stats once, pick a class and make choices from there. If you need help with character creation, or feel more comfortable having me there to answer any questions, then we will create characters right before a game starts or during the first 15 minutes. I will also be available after each session to aid in character advancement.
What to expect
Preparing for the session
Once you join, you will be sent a discord invite link. Please make sure you join the server and let me know who you are so you can be given the necessary permissions to see relevant channels. You will also be sent a roll20 game invite link. Create an account if needed and join it before we start playing. I encourage every player to have a camera on. This is optional. You should be prepared to check my available times for this campaign and to seek new time slots should none of them work for you. I will be periodically posting possible times for a session. If you want to play during one of those times, you will need to explicitly say so, and possibly seek other players or join existing groups. If you are familiar with Old-School Essentials, you may create a character on your own using core rules. There is a number of empty roll20 character sheets ready to be claimed at any one time.
What Tomasz | SnowChickenLord brings to the table
This game lives in the procedure and procedure is something I enjoy tinkering with. What you will get is gradual refinement of systems driving the game world with each session. While the nearby town is mostly there to enable player characters to rest and recuperate between expeditions, you will get to meet various characters and interact with them directly. I enjoy bringing life to a diverse cast of people living their lives in the background of a campaign. Recurring characters will always have a consistent voice. Having friends in town pays and some of them may be persuaded to aid you in the dungeon itself.
Homebrew rules
We will be using the following optional rules from the rulebook: - damage by weapon type - detailed encumbrance In-game time of the year corresponds to real world time directly. This means that the start of any expedition is the same date it is in the real world. Players may take on additional roles for an exp reward. You may be the cartographer or chronicler. Your designated task would be drawing the map during play or writing down what you found down below respectively. The products of your efforts bring not only a direct reward for your character but also help out during future dungeon delves. While in the dungeon, you may spend time to map a room. Such a room will be marked and once the party is back in town, brings a monetary reward with it when brought to a representative of the Archaeology and Cartography Society. A survey of an already mapped room may also be corroborated for a smaller reward. Both these kinds of payments contribute to exp in the same way regular treasure does.
Equipment needed to play
Internet
Computer
Microphone
Platforms used
Safety
How Tomasz | SnowChickenLord creates a safe table
Before you join your first session, we will meet for a short conversation concerning safety. This is when we share lines and veils. They are reviewed at the beginning of each game to make sure everyone is on the same page. Should something ever come up that warrants a break, please use the words "Let's Not". We will pause the game, clarify what needs to happen to keep everyone enjoying the experience and act accordingly. The last 5-10 minutes of each session we spend with stars and wishes - this is when we voice what we liked and what we wish for in future games. I especially appreciate this as it helps me improve in my craft over time. I am available for a short time after each session to handle any issues that come up and to assist in character advancement when needed.
Content warnings
Safety tools used